Jesse Lee Kercheval is the Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She is the author of six books and two chapbooks, including the story collection The Dogeater, the memoir Space, the novel The Museum of Happiness, and the poetry collections World as Dictionary and Dog Angel.

Wisconsin is not where Alice, a girl raised in Florida, meant to end up. But when she falls in love with Anders Dahl, a descendant of Norwegian farmers born for generations in the same stone farmhouse, she realizes that to love Anders is to settle into a life in Wisconsin in the small house they buy before their daughter, Maude, is born. Together, Alice and Anders move forward into a life of family, friends, and the occasional troubled student until they face their biggest challenge. Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Jesse Lee Kercheval's The Alice Stories tells the tale of a family: the pain of loss and the importance of the love of friends in the midst of turmoil. As timely as the news yet informed by rich humor and a deep understanding of human character, the interlinked Alice Stories form a luminous tale of family life. Jesse Lee Kercheval is Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She is the author of seven books and two chapbooks. Her first story collection, The Dogeater, won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Short Fiction, and her memoir, Space, won the Alex Award from the American Library Association.